Alan Schwarz, a contributor to ESPN The Magazine, is filing regular Pulsecards from spring training. Today he comes down with a slight case of Madness.

When the Cleveland Indians fill out their NCAA Tournament bracket pools this Sunday, the smart ones will look over the shoulders of two outfielders dressing one locker apart in this corner of the team's Winter Haven clubhouse. Let's just say these two can walk the walk and dance the Dance.

Kenny Lofton played in the Final Four in 1988, as Arizona's sixth man, and Terrell Lowery was the point guard on Loyola Marymount's Elite Eight team two years later. Neither hoops it up anymore, though they can't go more than a few days without a Tribe official trying to recruit them for a spring-training pickup league.

"I've got two inches on Kenny, but he's got more hops," says Lowery, trying to make the Indians as a fifth outfielder. "I could barely dunk right now."

The two never faced each other on the court -- Lofton played against Loyola the year before Lowery arrived -- but they often reminisce about their basketball days. Lofton says he wishes he played on Lowery's run-and-gun Marymount teams (with Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble) that routinely scored 110 points a night. "Sean Elliott couldn't play on that team -- they were too fast -- and Hank and Bo couldn't have played with us because we were too slow," Lofton says. "I wish I would have played for Loyola -- or Vegas. I loved playing the fast game. I told Tarkanian that when I saw him."

Lowery played against an LSU freshman named Shaquille O'Neal one year -- "He was still learning his game, but he was defensively dominant" -- and Lofton squared off several times against a certain UCLA guard we've all heard from since. "I always guarded Reggie Miller in the box-and-one," Lofton said. "He started trash-talking with me, so I just knocked him down."

Or so he remembers.